There is a trend in the death care industry towards personalizing to the deceased the funeral products and the funeral or other memorial service to provide a more meaningful memorial experience for the family and friends of the deceased. The casket in which the deceased is displayed can be customized to fit the needs and preferences of the deceased and the family. For instance, a wide variety of materials, finishes, colors, and decorative ornamentation can be chosen for the casket.
Some casket designs incorporate decorative corner ornaments secured to the casket during fabrication thereof. In many, if not most, prior designs, these ornamental corner pieces are rigidly affixed to the casket shell. Consequently, if a customer purchasing the casket is not pleased with the particular pre-installed ornamental corner pieces, and wishes to customize the casket exterior to his or her taste, the funeral director must go through a lengthy and complicated process to first remove the original ornamental corner pieces and then reinstall the ornamental corner pieces chosen by the customer. This process typically requires manual manipulation and access to the interior of the casket which may require the removal of bedding, lining, and the like. Such a process is time consuming and can damage the otherwise new casket and is thus frowned upon and generally avoided by the funeral director.
To more effectively market caskets, the funeral director desires to offer a wide variety of ornamental corner pieces from which a customer can select according to the customer's taste. However, to offer such a wide selection, and to avoid the undesirable practice mentioned above, the funeral director would have to maintain a large inventory of many different casket material/finish and corner piece combinations, which is also undesirable. To minimize the required inventory of finished caskets, the funeral director could simply have one casket of each material/finish on hand provided that the funeral director had some means providing for the quick and efficient changing of the ornamental corner pieces on each casket. As such, the customer could quickly view numerous corner pieces on a single casket, and the funeral director would need only stock a single casket of each material finish. Many prior casket designs, which rigidly affix the ornamental corner pieces, do not permit such quick and efficient changing of the ornamental corner pieces as discussed above.
A quick-change casket corner mechanism is disclosed in Acton et al. U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,591,466, 5,928,706, and 7,340,810, assigned to the assignee of the present invention and incorporated by reference herein. The Acton et al. patents disclose an ornamental corner piece assembly having a back plate that attaches to the corner of a casket. The back plate includes a clip member having at least one keyhole groove. A decorative corner insert includes at least one attachment member that slidingly engages the keyhole groove in the clip member such that the corner insert removably couples to the back plate. In this way, a funeral director may quickly and conveniently change out the decorative corner pieces to provide a wide variety of casket designs personalized to the deceased. Such a quick change casket corner ornament is commercially available from the assignee as its LIFESYMBOLS® line of corner ornaments.
A further advance in the areas of personalization and memorialization is the subject of Groemminger et al. U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,557,222, 6,883,212, and 7,210,204, assigned to the assignee of the present invention and incorporated by reference herein. The Groemminger et al. patents disclose a casket ornament display plaque and associated methods for memorializing a deceased. The casket ornament display plaque comprises a decorative board, a casket ornament attached to the board, and indicia attached to the board identifying the deceased to be memorialized. The casket ornament is one having been removed from a casket in which the deceased was displayed or one that is substantially identical thereto.
Advances have therefore been made in the area of casket designs incorporating decorative or ornamental corner pieces as demonstrated with the product discussed above. However, there continues to be room for improvement in the area of personalization in the death care industry.